Has anyone ever seen a UFO?

Very good advice Dave.

Yes I have seen UFO's. But after investigating what I had seen they were no longer UFOs rather they were IFOs (identifiable flying objects).

I believe that there probably is life somewhere else "out there". But nothing that you see in our atmosphere is "Alien". We could well be the supreme lifeform in our galaxy (30 years of SETI has come up with absolutely nothing). Now, 30 years is a very short period, but it does mean that there is no intelligent life within 15 light years of our planet (I'm giving SETI supporters very big leeway here). Is there a single piece of evidence of "Aliens" anywhere on this planet? NO! there isn't. Not a nut, screw or bolt, and don't give me any cr@p about government conspiracies (they haven't got the sense or intelligence).

Occams razor applies here. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", roughly translated as "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". An alternative version "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" translates "plurality should not be posited without necessity". Basically All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.

In other words - show me an alien and I'll show you a con-man. It's nice to "Believe" but wake up and smell the JAVA.

After reading John's reply... I think Occam's razor needs sharpening! I always think of it as "The simplist answer/solution is usually correct!"

Statistically we (the Human race) do not exist - given the number of stars in the galaxy and the number of galaxies in the Universe, and the number of known life-bearing planets in the universe! We don't even begin to register on the radar!! So the statistical likelihood of there being UFOs is also nearly zero... except that we know we exist (or at least think we do!)

Spooky, or what!

Agent Mulder.

I agree with John. Occams Razor. (the most obvious explanation is probably the real one)

It's like this Area 51 nonsense about a crashed alien space-ship. I mean, picture this, An alien civilisation travels half way across the cosmos in a space craft of unimaginable technology with systems of navigation we cannot even imagine and then.......they crash on the surface at the last second?...I mean come on. Anyway what would the motavation of and alien species be to buzz earth?.....Unless they came to invest money in the stock market:laugh:

Declan

very disturbed
Co Laois

Morgan

As an astronomer for my entire life so far at age 54, I can say as most astronomers do that that I have never seen anything that I could not identify. It is highly known that the general public, who are not avid observers, will regularly see more objects that they assume are UFO's. The simple reason is that the general public does not have trained eyes.

To many people of the world; auroras, planes flying in the distant night sky, satellites, you name it; some people I have spoke with assumed that a meteor was a UFO to them. I do not mean to sound cynical or arrogant here, but I have traveled for thousands of miles across the nation on the US Canadian continent; overseas in a third world nation. I have performed thousands of hours of sidewalk astronomy, although mostly solar through h-alpha telescopes, many hours with John Dobson performing this sidewalk astronomy here in Portland Oregon and for students at schools. *Please see this >
www.myspace.com/marksolarprophet

I can tell you stories about what the general public does not understand, but instead assumes from ill-informed or misunderstood news media and sensationalist journalism and science fiction. Their imaginations run wild with desire to "see something". Unfortunately, most of them have never been given the opportunity to take an astronomy class or ever observe through a good telescope. I have taught astronomy here at a local university in Portland. I can assure you that everyone wants to learn and look up to the stars.

I will offer this. My father and I were viewing through a pair of binoculars one night in our front yard in east Portland under relatively dark skies when I was a late teenager. He began to elucidate as he claimed to see a ghostly “V” formation flying overhead though the binoculars. He was formerly in WW2 and he observed the skies for many years before me as he grew up in very dark skies in North Dakota as achild; his father, my grand father, spoke often of his rememberance of seeing Halleys Comet in 1910 over the snowy wheat fields of North Dakota.

As my father viewed this supposed ghostly "V" formation of spots he was beside himself. He began to tell me it was a faint floating spots in this formation like birds flying in the usual known pattern. I said, dad do not take the binoculars off your eyes or you’ll lose it. He pushed the binoculars at me and exclaimed for me where to look. I could not see anything. He was angry as he could apparently not relate this to confirm it. He went into the house in tears to tell my mother. I had to calm him down.

Twenty years later I was camping with my family and other relatives at an Oregon Pacific coast State Park under darker night skies. I took my 10 inch Newtonian~Dobsonian scope and binoculars. I was searching or spotting to line up the Dobsonian onto the galaxies M81 ~ M82. I picked up the moving “V” formation image accidentally and my mind rushed back to my fathers frenzy that night. Everyone had gone to sleep at the campsite. My sister-in-law was the only one up at the camp fire. I called to her to come and look with the binoculars. The same scenario; she saw nothing.

I have discussed this with others over the years. The Timothy Ferris PBS TV Special aired here in the states a few years ago, shows Ferris talking about the exact same thing.
He wrote it off as the softly lit bellies of birds flying over in formation. I tend to agree with this analogy. Or it is possible that this apparent image is an anomaly in the aqueous humor of the eye; an after image or something like floaters in the eye.

With all this said, I have conducted my own surveys with the general public. If in a large crowd, you ask the question, “How many of you have seen a UFO?” Many in the crowd will raise their hands and tell many similar and some wild stories. Then ask, who in the crowd are veteran astronomers with many hours of observation under their belts? When that section of the crowd is determined, ask the astronomers, how many of them have seen UFO’s. Almost all of the time, no astronomer has a story of ever seeing a UFO. Think about this for a moment. These are the ones who have spent thousands of hours under dark skies with very intense observations and they have never seen a thing that they would classify as “Unidentified”. What does this tell you?

The general public only looks up accidentally when something catches their eyes while driving in a car, say. Have you ever noticed this? Reflections on the car window from distant streetlights as you peer out, the lights behind to your angle of incidence will reflect like wild colored dancing UFO’s in the sky, yet these images are actually n the window glass a couple inches from your eyes. Now add a couple alcoholic drinks and the imagination runs wild with stories never told because the event will scare the driver to losing control of his or her vehicle and it’s all over. Or others going out after watching sci-fi movie after sci-fi movie. They are primed to assume and hungry to see that anything that moves in the sky must be a punitive army of monsters from space that are out to get them!

This is not my soul analogy. It has been written many times by the scientists and those who have well trained eyes and know and understand what they are seeing. I am not saying that I am unwilling to stay open to the first intelligent communications from space. But one might also ask, if they have the intelligence to get her from light years away or if it is even a fast trip through some other dimensional worm-hole in space-time, why would they not want to communicate with us?

I hope this explanation helps,

Mark Seibold, Artist-Astronomer, Portland Oregon
My Sketch and Photography Gallery at Cloudy Nights Astro Forums (5 pages)>
www.cloudynights.com/photopost/showgalle...ppuser=37924&cat=500

Thank you Mark for your viewpoints and sharing of experiences. Without covering the same ground again, many of the issues and concerns you have raised about this controversial subject have been addressed / covered to a large extent in a previous discussion on the IFAS forum which currently extends to some 20 pages. In fact it was the most singular popular subject ever discussed on this astronomy forum the last time I checked the stats. The link is www.irishastronomy.org/forum?func=view&catid=1&id=12504

A number of cups of strong coffee are recommended, enjoy!

Kind regards and clear skies
Mike

BTW
Excellent artwork Mark.

Excellent Stuff Mark, thanks for sharing this. I get a lot of email about this subject and I would very much like (with your permission) to quote what you have just written (with credit of course) in replies. A very well written passage which covers my own thoughts exactly.